Featured Research

Your left side is your best side: Our left cheek shows more emotion, which observers find more aesthetically pleasing

Date:

April 20, 2012

Source:

Springer

Summary:

Your best side may be your left cheek, according to a new study. Images of the left side of the face are perceived and rated as more pleasant than pictures of the right side of the face, possibly due to the fact that we present a greater intensity of emotion on the left side of our face.

Share This

Your best side may be your left cheek. Images of the left side of the face are perceived and rated as more pleasant than pictures of the right side of the face, possibly due to the fact that we present a greater intensity of emotion on the left side of our face.

Your best side may be your left cheek, according to a new study by Kelsey Blackburn and James Schirillo from Wake Forest University in the US. Their work shows that images of the left side of the face are perceived and rated as more pleasant than pictures of the right side of the face, possibly due to the fact that we present a greater intensity of emotion on the left side of our face.

Related Articles

Their work is published online in Springer's journal Experimental Brain Research.

Others can judge human emotions in large part from facial expressions. Our highly specialized facial muscles are capable of expressing many unique emotions. Research suggests that the left side of the face is more intense and active during emotional expression. It is also noteworthy that Western artists' portraits predominantly present subjects' left profile.

Blackburn and Schirillo investigated whether there are differences in the perception of the left and right sides of the face in real-life photographs of individuals.

The authors explain: "Our results suggest that posers' left cheeks tend to exhibit a greater intensity of emotion, which observers find more aesthetically pleasing. Our findings provide support for a number of concepts -- the notions of lateralized emotion and right hemispheric dominance with the right side of the brain controlling the left side of the face during emotional expression.

"Participants were asked to rate the pleasantness of both sides of male and female faces on gray-scale photographs. The researchers presented both original photographs and mirror-reversed images, so that an original right-cheek image appeared to be a left-cheek image and vice versa.They found a strong preference for left-sided portraits, regardless of whether the pictures were originally taken of the left side, or mirror-reversed. The left side of the face was rated as more aesthetically pleasing for both male and female posers.

These aesthetic preferences were also confirmed by measurements of pupil size, a reliable unconscious measurement of interest. Indeed, pupils dilate in response to more interesting stimuli -- here more pleasant-looking faces, and constrict when looking at unpleasant images. In the experiment, pupil size increased with pleasantness ratings.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Springer. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Springer. "Your left side is your best side: Our left cheek shows more emotion, which observers find more aesthetically pleasing." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 20 April 2012. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120420123847.htm>.

Springer. (2012, April 20). Your left side is your best side: Our left cheek shows more emotion, which observers find more aesthetically pleasing. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 3, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120420123847.htm

Springer. "Your left side is your best side: Our left cheek shows more emotion, which observers find more aesthetically pleasing." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120420123847.htm (accessed March 3, 2015).

More From ScienceDaily

More Mind & Brain News

Featured Research

Mar. 3, 2015 — Limp or firm, your handshake conveys subliminal social cues. Now, research reveals it also transmits chemical signals that could explain why the greeting evolved in the first ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Everyone worries about losing their memory as they grow older—memory loss remains one of the most common complaints of the elderly. But the molecular reasons behind the processes remain unclear, ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — A strong link has been made between subthreshold manic episodes and likelihood of developing bipolar disorder in children of parents with bipolar disorder. The study’s findings could improve ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — A newly published study is the first to report an association between bisphenol-A (BPA), a common plasticizer used in a variety of consumer food and beverage containers, with autism spectrum disorder ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — On Feb. 26, a picture of a cocktail dress originally uploaded to the blog Tumblr swept the Internet and managed to divide the population over a simple question: What color is the dress? Some viewers ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — A deficiency in the protein responsible for moving glucose across the brain's protective blood-brain barrier appears to intensify the neurodegenerative effects of Alzheimer's disease, according to a ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — Researchers describe how postmortem brain slices can be 'read' to determine how a rat was trained to behave in response to specific sounds, a new article suggests. The work provides one of the first ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — Teenagers in North Carolina were easily able to buy electronic cigarettes online because both Internet vendors and shipping companies failed to verifying ages in a study that assessed compliance with ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — A survey of US high school students suggests that 1 in 5 female students and 1 in 10 male students who date have experienced some form of teen dating violence (TDV) during the past 12 months. "These ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — Cerebral blood flow recovery in the brain could be a biomarker of outcomes in patients following concussion, a new imaging study suggests. Most of the 3.8 million sports-related traumatic brain ... full story

Related Stories

Oct. 15, 2013 — Shoppers are more likely to buy a product from a different location when a pleasant sound coming from a particular direction draws attention to the item, according to a new ... full story

Jan. 9, 2012 — Objects that resemble faces are everywhere. Whether it’s New Hampshire’s erstwhile granite “Old Man of the Mountain,” or Jesus’ face on a tortilla, our brains are adept at locating images ... full story

Mar. 10, 2011 — Unconsciously, right-handers associate good with the right side of space and bad with the left. But this association can be rapidly changed, according to a new study. Even a few minutes of using the ... full story

July 29, 2010 — Politicians' gestures can reveal their thoughts, according to a new study. In laboratory tests, right- and left-handers associate positive ideas like honesty and intelligence with their dominant ... full story

Apr. 28, 2010 — Patients recovering from stroke sometimes behave as if completely unaware of one half of the world: colliding with obstacles on their left, eating food only from the right side of their plate, or ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.